« October 2007 | Main | December 2007 »
November 28, 2007
Quick Review: EEE PC
I picked up a http://eeepc.asus.com/ this week. So far I've gotten it working on my wireless net at home, loaded some Powerpoint presentations and AVI/MP4 movies onto a SecureDigital card and run them in OpenOffice and the built-in video player, and hit control-alt-T to spawn a terminal window.
I also configured the IM client for one of my AIM accounts, Skype, and ran Firefox.
I don't know which icon is Thunderbird, but I'll get that set up eventually. I'll also upgrade some things like Skype and Firefox.
So far so good. It's WAY too tiny for me to use it for much but as a tiny PC it's pretty cool. I think one thing to do would be to use it as an Ebook reader, a video player (using an iPod or other external USB drive for storage), maybe music, etc.
It comes with a 4gig internal solid state hard drive, with about 1.7gb free. I stuck in a 2gig SD card I had in my camera; it's not really formatted properly but it'll do for now (the camera formatted it as FAT16 which means it's ~1.7gb also) - enough for a few TV shows or a movie or two.
I found a 16gig HCSD (high capacity secure digital) card online for $150. No thanks - at least not yet - but good to know. If it gets down to 50 in the near future, maybe. Otherwise I'll try to find a cheap 4gig card somewhere, to hold me over. Or another $20 or so 2gig and just swap them in and out.
Posted by aland at 1:59 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Quick Review: iPod Touch
On Black Friday (GASP) I went to the Apple Store with my dad to pick up a new computer to replace his dying G4 desktop. He had a 17" LCD. We ended up picking up a 24" 2.4GhZ iMac with 1gig RAM and a 320gig HD for him. But that's not what we're here to talk about. :-)
Because I was saving him some money on the iMac, and because it's 'what we do', he picked up the latest geek toy for me for a combination of holidays/birthday. I am the proud owner of a new 16gig iPod Touch.
I chose the Touch, rather than the iPhone, because (a) it's 16gig vs. 8gig, (b) no recurring costs, and (c) despite the occasional frustration, I do LIKE having Verizon as my cell carrier. I get free text messages & calling to most of the people I talk to, and despite using it for work (conf. calls and the like) I never come close to using all of my bundled minutes.
Anyway -- the iPod touch. It's adorable, first of all. It has the same problem I have with ALL the iPods I've had... The back collects fingerprints like it's an CSI agent. With that as a given... I like it a lot. I realized after a day that it won't be quite as useful to me as an iPhone would... Many places have free wifi, but not all. And my workplace doesn't, nor do most of the places I travel for work. So from the always-on internet perspective, it's not gonna hack it. I'll deal. And/or I'll use my laptop, which has a Verizon EVDO card.
As far as using it the way Jobs intended... It's snazzy. I really like that I can add calendar events and update contacts on the iPod, and when I sync, the changes will make it back to the laptop (and through the magic of .mac sync, to my other machines as well!). It syncs my bookmarks, which is also pretty awesome. Culling down my video & audio to just what I want on the iPod was non-trivial, and I'm sure that at some point I'm gonna notice something I want on there but don't have.
Things that don't thrill me... No wifi sync. No 'native' email client. I want the Youtube icon to recognize -MY- Youtube account (and favorites), not just the localized iPod favorites. "only" 16gig. While I can understand blanking out the entry of passwords, I -really- wish I could view & validate my password while I was typing it. The virtual keyboard wants smaller fingers than mine. ;-) While I'm talking about the keyboard, it would be great to have a keyboard with numbers AND letters while entering wifi keys & passwords. :-)
All that said, I used it to read & respond to some email via my Gmail account, to listen to a song or two (heh) and to watch a few videos (both youtube and TV shows I recorded and sync'd from SnapStream Beyond TV 4). From a time perspective, I spent most of the time I've used it watching videos or web surfing, which is about what I expected.
The other MAJOR thing I like about it is the photo album capability... Having the bigger screen is great. I DO wish I could control the order that things sync, so I could say "Copy all my photos on, then these movies/TV/podcasts, and then as much of the music on these playlists as will fit." That's really how I plan to use it. But I may be spoiled, I have an 80gig iPod to carry around ALL my music, and an iPod Shuffle for, well, when the battery runs out on the iPod. :-) The Touch is intended primarily for video & photos, and for web surfing, and I think it'll do me well in those areas.
Posted by aland at 1:58 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
November 3, 2007
The Nietzsche Family Circus
The Nietzsche Family Circus pairs a randomized Family Circus cartoon with a randomized Friedrich Nietzsche quote. Refresh the page to see a new comic and share your favorites by clicking permalink.
Posted by aland at 2:33 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack